CHAPTER XIII
A day of storm buffeted the Moor. Fitful streaks of light roamed through a wild and silver welter of low cloud; and now they rested on a pool or river, and the water flashed; and now they fired the crests of the high lands or made the ruddy brake-fern flame. Behind Shaugh Moor was storm-cloud, and beneath it, oozing out into the valleys, extended the sullen green of water-logged fields hemmed in with autumnal hedges.
Hither came Mark Baskerville on his way to Shaugh, and then a man stopped him and changed his plan. For some time he had neither seen nor heard from Cora, and unable longer to live with this cloud between them, Mark was now on his way to visit her.
Consideration had convinced him that he was much in fault, and that she did well to keep aloof until he came penitent back again; but he had already striven more than once to do so, and she had refused to see him. He told himself that it was natural she should feel angered at the past, and natural that she should be in no haste to make up so serious a quarrel.
But the catastrophe had now shrunk somewhat in his estimation, and he doubted not that Cora, during the passage of many days, also began to see it in its proper perspective. He did not wholly regret their difference, and certain words that she had spoken still stung painfully when he considered them; but the dominant hunger in his mind was to get back to her, kiss her lips and hear her voice again. He would be very circumspect henceforth, and doubtless so would she. He felt sure that Cora regretted their difference now, and that the time was over-ripe for reconciliation.
The next rehearsal would take place upon the following day, and Mark felt that friendly relations must be re-established before that event. He was on his road to see Cora and take no further denial, when her brother met him and stopped him.
"Lucky I ran against you," said Heathman; "I've got a letter for you from my sister, and meant to leave it on my way out over to Lee Moor. Coarse weather coming by the look of it."
"Thank you," answered Mark. "You've saved me a journey then. I was bound for Undershaugh."
Heathman, who knew that he bore evil news, departed quickly, while the other, with true instinct of sybarite, held the precious letter a moment before opening it.
It happened that Cora seldom wrote to him, for they met very often; but now, having a difficult thing to say, she sought this medium, and Mark, knowing not the truth, was glad.
"Like me—couldn't keep it up no more," he thought. "I almost wish she'd let me say I was sorry first; but she might have heard me say so a week ago, if she'd liked. Thank Heaven we shall be happy again before dark. I'll promise everything in the world she wants to-night—even to the ring with the blue stone she hungered after at Plymouth."
He looked round, then the wind hustled him and the rain broke in a tattered veil along the edge of the hill.
"I'll get up to Hawk Tor, and lie snug there, and read her letter in the lew place I filled with fern for her," he thought.
There was a natural cavern facing west upon this height, and here, in a nook sacred to Cora, he sat presently and lighted his pipe and so came to the pleasant task. He determined that having read her plea for forgiveness, it would be impossible to wait until nightfall without seeing her.
"I'll go down and take dinner with them," he decided: then he read the letter:—
"DEAR MARK,
"After what happened a little while ago you cannot be surprised if I say I will not marry you. There is nothing to be said about it except that I have quite made up my mind. I have thought about it ever since, and not done nothing in a hurry. We would not suit one another, and the older we grew, the worse we should quarrel. So it will be better to part before any harm is done. You will easily find a quieter sort of girl, without so much spirit as me. And she will suit you better than what I do. I have told my mother that I am not going to marry you. And Mr. Nathan Baskerville, your own uncle, though he is very sorry indeed about it, is our family friend and adviser, and he says it is better we understand and part at once. I hope you won't make any fuss, as nothing will change me. And you will have the pleasure of knowing your father will be thankful. No doubt you will soon find a better-looking and nicer girl than me, and somebody that your father won't treat the same as he treated
"Yours truly,
"CORA LINTERN."
Through the man's stunned grief and above the chaos of his thoughts, one paramount and irrevocable conviction reigned. Cora meant what she wrote, and nothing that he had power to say or to do would win her back again. She would never change; she had seen him in anger and the sight had determined her; she had met his father and had felt that such antagonism must ruin her life.
He possessed imagination and was able swiftly to feel what life must mean without her. He believed that his days would be impossible henceforth. He read the letter again and marked how she began with restraint and gradually wrote herself into anger.
She smarted when she reflected on his father; and he soon convinced himself that it was his father who had driven her to these conclusions. He told himself that he did not blame her. The pipe in his mouth had been given to him by Cora. He emptied it now, put it into its case, rose up and went home. He planned the things to say to his father and determined to show him the letter. Mark desired to make his father suffer, and did not doubt but that he would suffer when this catastrophe came to his ears.
Then his father appeared before him, far off, driven by the wind; and Mark, out of his tortured mind, marvelled to think that a thing so small as this dim spot, hastening like a dead leaf along, should have been powerful enough, and cruel enough, deliberately to ruin his life. For he was now obsessed by the belief that his father alone must be thanked for the misfortune.
They came together, and Humphrey shouted to be heard against the riot of the wind. His hat was pressed over his ears; the tails of his coat and the hair on his head leapt and danced; his eyes were watering.
"A brave wind! Might blow sense into a man, if anything could. What are you doing up here?"
"Read that," said the other, and his father stopped and stared at him. Despite the rough air and the wild music of heath and stone, Mark's passion was not hidden and his face as well as his voice proclaimed it. "See what you have done for your only son," he cried.
Humphrey held out his hand for the letter, took it and turned his back to the wind. He read it slowly, then returned it to Mark.
"She means that," he answered. "This isn't the time to speak to you. I know all that's moving in you, and I guess how hard life looks. But I warn you: be just. I'm used to be misread by the people and care nought; but I'd not like for you to misread me. You think that I've done this."
"I know you have—and done it with malice aforethought too. The only thing I've ever loved in life—the only thing that ever comed into my days to make 'em worth living—and you go to work behind my back to take it away from me. And me as good a son to you as my nature would allow—always—always."
"As good a son as need be hoped for—I grant that. But show a little more sense in this. Use your brains, of which you've got too many for your happiness, and see the truth. Can a father choke a girl off a man if she loves the man? Was it ever heard that mother or father stopped son or daughter from loving? 'Tis against nature, and nought I could have said, and nought I could have done would have come between her and you—never, if she'd loved you worth a curse. But she didn't. She loved the promise of your money. She loved the thought of being the grey mare and playing with a weak man's purse. She loved to think on the future, when I was underground and her way clear. And that hope would have held with her just as strong after knowing me, as before knowing me. The passing trouble of me, and my straight, sour speeches, and my eyes looking through her into her dirty little heart, wouldn't have turned the girl away from you, if she'd loved you honestly. Why, even lust of money would have been too strong to break down under that—let alone love of man. 'Tis not I but somebody else has sloked[[1]] her away from thee. And the time will come when you may live to thank your God that it's happened so. But enough of that. I can bear your hard words, Mark; and bitter though 'twill sound upon your ear, I'll tell you this: I'm thankful above measure she's flung you over. 'Tis the greatest escape of your life, and a blessing in disguise—for more reasons than you know, or ever will. And as for him that's done it, nought that you can wish him be likely to turn out much worse than what he'll get if he marries that woman."
[[1]] Sloked—enticed and tempted.
"Shouldn't I know if 'twas another man? She was friendly and frank with all. She hadn't a secret from me. 'Twas only my own blind jealousy made me think twice about it when she talked with other men."
"But she did talk with 'em and you did think twice? And you didn't like it? And you quarrelled -eh? And that was the sense in you—the sense trying to lift you above the blind instinct you'd got for her. Would you have quarrelled for nothing? Are you that sort? Too fond of taking affronts and offering the other cheek, you are—like I was once. You can't blind me. You've suffered at her hands already, and spoken, and this is her slap back at you. No need to drag me in at all then; though I did give her raw sense for her dinner when she came to see me. Look further on than your father for the meaning of this letter. Look to yourself first, and if that don't throw light, look afield."
"There's none—none more than another—I'll swear it."
"Seek a man with money and with a face like a barber's image and not over-much sense. That's the sort will win her; and that's the sort will suit her. And now I've done."
They walked together and said the same things over and over again, as people are prone to do in argument. Then they separated in heat, for the father lost patience and again declared his pleasure at this accident.
Whereon Mark cried out against him for a callous and brutal spirit, and so left him, and turned blindly homeward. He did not know what to do or how to fight this great tribulation. He could not believe it. He came back to Hawk House at last and found himself in an angle of the dwelling, out of the wind.
Here reigned artificial silence and peace. The great gale roared overhead; but beneath, in this nook, not a straw stirred. He stood and stared at his fallen hopes and ruined plans; while from a dry spot beside the wall, there came to him the sweet, sleepy chirruping of chickens that cuddled together under their mother's wings.